These games had received updates three times. The first added potato-themed objects with hidden cryptic clues as to what the next update would be, specifically 13 cyphers which formed a 13-letter word.

The second added an Aperture Science login to the Steam overlay upon completing certain in-game tasks within each game, which provided players with an archive of Portal 2 concept art for each game that contained data chunks that could be combined into a single archive password-protected by the aforementioned 13-letter word.

The third update added Portal-themed content to the games, as well as a task that, when performed, took players to an Aperture Science page where GlaDOS speaks a peculiar sentence alluding to two locations in the city of Seattle, WA whose combined names spell 'nelipot', the name of a group on Steam where players could find Portal 2 screenshots and a QR code that pointed them to a page on the Aperture Science website.

The page, a spoof of distributed computing projects called [email protected], contained a countdown to the release of Portal 2 as well as counters indicating the number of players who completed each task for each game, which earned them potato icons on their Steam account, suggesting that players could release Portal 2 early by completing these tasks enough times. The combined efforts eventually saw the game unlocked on Steam at 21:29 on Monday, April 19, nine and a half hours earlier than the scheduled release.